


And This Bird You Cannot Change

by laudatenium



Series: Free Bird [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Clint Has Issues, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Kids, Natasha Feels, Natasha Needs a Hug, Red Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 12:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2508647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudatenium/pseuds/laudatenium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a life she wants.<br/>She can't have it.<br/>But she can hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And This Bird You Cannot Change

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd

She never openly considers it. With the life they lead, it would not only be selfish, it would be irresponsible. Impossible.

Love is for children. She’s always known that.

 

She hasn’t had love since she was taken from the streets of Moscova when she was six, since the faceless men in their nondescript ushankas wrenched her from Sasha’s hand. She remembers his shout being lost in the winter air, the crack of the butt of a gun against his skull being so similar to those sounds of the thin ice that they were told never try and cross, lest the river trolls come and take them to live with them under the ice. Never was there more fun than trying to cross, that first sweetness of a broken rule. She remembers no greater cold, not the Alps, not the Caucuses, not the Andes, not Siberia, because the nameless river held her entire being in its unfeeling center. (She understands better than the others why Steve is always so reluctant to open the freezer.)

She remembers how thin Sasha looked as he dragged her out, his homespun and their dedushka’s old furs dripping and freezing onto his skin, his thin chest rattling as Mat’ and Babushka tried to force warmth back in to his malnourished frame while Otets wiped her eyes and told her to keep heart. Her relief when he opened his eyes and called her Belka in a hoarse voice. She remembers her promise to never let him go again.

She remembers being held down in a black van with a cloth soaked something sweet and cloying stuffed in her face. Her last thought was filled with the crack of a rifle against his skull and the knowledge he would never save her again.

 

She remembers a time when she was Doch’, Vnuchka, Sestrenka.

Before she was simply Vdova.

 

(She also remembers standing in the back of a church twenty years later, face obscured in shadow, as the priest asked the man what name he gave his daughter.

“Natalia. For my sister.”)

 

There was no love amidst the acolytes. It was not twenty-eight girls who became sisters through common hardship. It was twenty-eight starving bitches held by the collar as a man in padded clothing blew a whistle and dangled a single scrap of meat. 

It was not the laughable American competition. There was no second place, no participation ribbon, no pizza party afterwards. In Russia, there was only a victor and the dead.

(Enter Tony with his 2.5 million “In Soviet Russia” jokes. Until he is reminded that you have no fewer than eight knives on your person at all times.)

 

She remembers the first time she met him, handgun against bow, and how she had recognized something in his eyes. Something she saw in her own when she had access to a mirror.

She remembers the ally she had made, the one she had sworn never to make. But she had sworn it to Mother Russia, and now it seemed as though Mother Russia wanted her dead.

She remembers the gallows humor and the hands raised in surrender and the American who danced with her in Red Square and the twisted smirk as his arrow pierced meaty necks of the men who had controlled her. 

She remembers her first time, her real first time, as she allowed her body to seek pleasure instead of the goal she had been ordered to attain. She remembers him lying there, helping to teach her, groaning in an impossibly soft way she hadn’t heard before.

She remembers telling him she had forgotten when her birthday was, and the day he showed up randomly with a squashed chocolate sponge cake and had declared it her new birthday. She remembers him unsheathing a hunting knife and cutting uneven slices, and the two of them sitting on the floor of the safe house-apartment and eating with their hands the sweetest thing she had ever tasted at three in the morning.

 

She likes to imagine a small house, out in the country, because she’s always been in cities, and she wants to breathe. She doesn’t want to see people. Not anymore.

She imagines a huge yard that goes right up to the woods. The grass would always be slightly too long, and she imagines him drinking an entire six-pack and getting it into his head that nine o’clock on a Saturday night is the best time to mow the lawn. She imagines standing in the bay windows where she never has to hide while laughing at him cutting jagged lines across the yard.

She imagines him massaging her swollen ankles, and breaking his fingers when she squeezes too hard on delivery day. She imagines him weeping for half an hour after he is handed the hospital blanket, and she wants to smile so long that her face hurts.

She imagines a deep window sill with room to cool pies and she would never close the window over the sink, with a view of the large but cramped vegetable garden like her babushka kept. She imagines her trying to teach him not to burn water as they listen to intelligible shouts from outside.

She imagines a gurgling face as tiny chubby fists tangle in the hair she decides to grow out. She imagines treating scraped knees because they fell out of trees, because Daddy was old, and if he could climb them, why couldn’t I? 

She imagines leaning over his shoulder as he gently rocks the gliding rocking chair, and she would sing the lullabies she hasn’t heard since she was six, yet she still remembers every word.

 

“It can’t happen.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“We don’t have lives where it would be possible.”

“We could run. Leave and start anew.”

“We both promised we would stop running. You said we would take our lives as they happen from now on out.”

“Clint, we could make it work here then.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Nat, I’m not the paternal type. And I’m not gonna change anytime soon.”

 

She sees him evacuate school buses of third graders. She sees him literally tear out the throat of a man in front of his harem of kidnapped girls. She sees him take to the archery class at the Boys’ and Girls’ Club like a fish to water. She sees his trepidation when the little boy tentatively approaches him with his smiling father trailing several feet behind him, and the shock and pleasure in his face as the boy produces an Avengers’ officially licensed bow and shyly asks him if he could sign it. She sees him put on the “hawkface” as he father raises his camera phone, and the soft look that appears when the boy throws his arms around his neck and whispers “I love you, Hawkeye,” and she sees him hug the boy back, tightly.

She knows he can lie to himself.

And she hopes.

 

She sees him smile secretly at her from over his Coco Puffs across the breakfast table for no reason, as Bruce tries to convince Thor to use the toaster instead of simply zapping his breakfast with his lightning, just because it’s “less time consuming”. See hears his hoarse shouts down the hospital hall as she drifts in and out of consciousness as surgeons hover over her. She feels him stroke and kiss her hair when he thinks she’s still asleep. She smells the battle and ash still on him, but she doesn’t care as he pulls her into his arms. She tastes the mouthwash he used to try and rid the metallic taste of blood from his mouth before he kisses her.

 

Love is for children.

And a life without love isn’t what she wants.

But he’s there.

And it might just be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> List of Russian terms:  
> Moscova - Moscow  
> Ushanka – traditional Russian military-style fur hat  
> Dedushka - Grandfather  
> Mat’ – Mother, Mom  
> Babushka – Grandmother  
> Otets – Father, Dad  
> Belka – Squirrel  
> Doch’ - Daughter  
> Vnuchka - Granddaughter  
> Sestrenka – Little Sister  
> Vdova – Widow


End file.
